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Termyn8or -> RE: RIAA says transferring music to computer is illegal (1/1/2008 1:29:03 PM)
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I concur, especially with sam here.
I am in the process of saving every sctrached up album, half erased cassette and even eight tracks. I have quite a bit. This will be defense exhibit one. I want replacement media for a nominal charge because in their own argument it is the music not the media which holds the real value.
I DLed the Cheech and Chong movies, they wanna fuck with me for it ? OK, I have them on BETA tapes. They are worn, REPLACE THEM for a dollar or two apiece. I already paid for the movies, they owe me the right to watch them whenever I want. I paid for them, I got cheated and I want restitution. And I don't need the peanut gallery, dammit, tell that lawyer to go home and get the accountant in here. Add up each and every piece of media I legally own and in the end they are likely to owe me a few bucks.
Problem is there are a few things I can't prove. Like the fact the I bought Bob Segar Double live bullet three fucking times. Once on LP and twice on CD. The one CD did not even make it home. I lost it, my guess is that it fell out the car door at the gas station. Never got played once, at least by me.
I bought Michael Stanley Stagepass more than once. I had it on CD a long time ago but that is lost. Thing is I was unable to DL it. But then I have this music guru who supplied it to me on CDROM in MP3 format for five bucks.
There's a twist for ya. Even though I actually do have the right to have Stagepass, it was most likely considered illegal that he provided me with a replacement for a nominal charge, but was it illegal fo me to buy it ?
If the truth be told, I have DLed ALOT, I mean ALOT. I do it very rarely now because basically I can't think of anything else I want. Maybe I am a thief in that respect, but I stole from thieves anyway.
I would not be walking into court with clean hands, but my points should still hold water. There would be one hell of an offset.
Sharing is a whole nother issue. If nobody shares P2P does not work. When I was hot and heavy into it I had a policy. If a tune came fast because alot of people had it, I would not share it. What I shared was those things that take a month to get, only one person in the world has it, things like that, or the Stagepass.
See my musical taste is not the norm. All my life I could just barely stand top 40. There is very little on the radio I like. I am a rocker and if in the car I wind up on the hillbilly station. Cleveland, the supposed rock and roll capital of the world (they said) couldn't sustain a Zrock franchise for more than about five years. What ? If anyone remembers Zrock, if we were indeed the "home of rock and roll", or the capital, shit Zrock should've STARTED here.
It is all hype, it is all bullshit.
As time goes on I am less and less pleased with the results from P2P. I probably have about 5,000 songs and perhaps a hundred full albums. I hate when they just rip it to one file, you can't easily get to the song you want to hear. But it is good for some albums, like Pink Floyd Animals. (which I have also bought legally). That one you can play in it's entirety. And right now that's the only way I got Double live Bullet, all in one file.Bought that fucker three times and now to get to the song I want I have to move this little pointer around. I want the RIAA to supply me the individual files.
I know I am a cocky fucker, but only when it comes to certain things. This is one of them.
I am not too inclined to get on P2P these days, I need to clean out my shared directory, I got 540 files there amounting to about 5 GB. This is not a good situation. I talk the talk, but I do not intend to walk the walk until the time comes. It would be stupid to invite them to sue me.
I'll tell you what, I would delete or pay for everything I got except for a few things. First of all I like oldies, so I flat out refuse to pay for anything that has ever been in the public domain. How did these pieces get out of public domain ? I am part of the public, where is my check ? I MEAN THAT. When something was in public domain yet now is not and requires royalties just who did these new copyright holders pay ? I saw no public dispersion of funds. THAT MEANS THEY STOLE IT !
Like I said, I am stealing from a thief.
And last but not least, alot of the stuff I got you just can't get. Go to a record store and look for Circus, MSB, even Grand Funk. It ain't there. Try to find Elvis On Stage 1970. Here's a good one, go look for Glass Bottle I Ain't Got Time Anymore. That was damnear top 40 but it took me a month to get it. I mean this program I got will keep trying until the file is complete. As thirty or forty other downloads got here in minutes, this one poked along for a month, and that was the hot and heavy days, I was on it every day. It was worth it though. Go try to find Dwight Twilly band I'm On Fire. Actually that one came pretty fast on P2P, but it took awhile to remember and Google or whatever to get the group name.
As far as tha Dwight Twilly, I DLed quite a few songs by mistake. I'd gladly get rid of them, all I wanted was the one. Same way with Donna Summer I Feel Love. Now I admit that one is on the very edge of my taste. I am not sure I would pay for a whole album just to get that song.
Beware the gray area, and it is all gray area.
Realistically if they made it so I could just buy one song without getting the whole CD I would. I want Nickelback Rockstar, but nothing else. I did DL the rest and I am willing to let it go. Some of it is OK but it was not what I was after.
Now when you talk the 70s when they made an album that really fit together, i.e. Pink Floys Animals then I want the whole thing. But with their stature and abilities they were able to put it together right. Alot of albums now (CDs but the same concept) have a couple of good tunes and the rest is filler. Possibly some remakes, I CANNOT STAND REMAKES.
And record company suits are the ones who caused this. Years ago I was in a discussion (an actual real one, not like here lol) about "Why is any group's first album the best ?". OK it s not true in all cases, but in alot. The reason : that first alum took the band their entire life to make. Then they get it to a record company and now they are under contract to produce another album every year or two. Having spent most of the advance they MUST produce an album.
Boston was a perfect example of this. Their first album had such diverse material on it you would think they are the most creative and adept band in the world. But what you don't realize is that it may have taken them thrity years to make it. Now they gotta do one in two. Foreigner is not quite as good an example, but it still applies. Actually their Double Vision album was good. That's another one I bought and paid for a long time ago, and now the only way I have it is in one big file, you can't skip tracks.
Anyway, the tactic of "signing" a group and forcing performance is one of the shittiest things the record industry ever did. Boston's second album would've been alot better if there was no timetable. Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad, but the act of selling albums has made the concept of an album obsolete. They will use songs they did not want to use and even do copies in some cases to fulfill the contract. It is no longer EXACTLY what they wanted to do.
Having understood this for a long time and now writing music, I know how it is. It takes alot of time to write a song. Sure you can put it down on paper, but there are going to be seemingly endless changes and who knows. And any song can be scrapped. But no, we need the money.
The record industry has thusly turned play into work. But it is still called play. It just isn't.
So let's recap here. They sue their customers. They goad bands with advances into signing contracts that compel preformance, and will sue them if the fail to live up to the terms of the contract that they wrote.
Let me tell you the kind of people we are dealing with here, because I do understand them. Greed is a disease, and the only cure can come from the inside, there is no help out there. I call them suits partly because it is politically correct and partly because I think most people know what I mean.
Take the case of the MPAA against Sony. I used to be a Sony freak, except I never liked their audio equipment. My twenty year old XBR is still working though, but I wouldn't hit a dog in the ass with their new stuff. But you can thank Sony for the VCR.
The MPAA sued Sony for building VCRs. This is the beta days. They built a machine that could record and playback TV shows. The TV stations did not sue Sony. The networks did not sue Sony, the MPAA sued Sony.
The MPAA or their equivalent sued Sony, because they control the movies. But what people do not realize about the avariciousness of this is that by the time a movie was put on TV, it had already run it's course at the theaters. There was no video store and very very few parts of the US had anything that resembles cable TV. At that time most "cable" were nothing more than what it used to be called "CATV" which stands for Community Antenna TV. A small town in a valley where you couldn't get any decent reception would go up the hill, put up an antenna and get amps and splitters to supply their constituents with a viable TV signal. This is how it started.
Damn am I old. But I see this as all the same old shit, greed. Did you know that Avarice was someone's name ? Have any idea when he lived ? Yes, this has been going on for a very long time. I seem to remember a story about Joshua bar Joseph throwing a whole bunch of people out of a church for turning it into a flea market. That is over 1,900 years ago. And Craessus was even before that IIRC. Greed is so old that the dirt on it is no longer dirty.
And that is the problem. Greed is not recognized for the plague it is on society, it is considered normal now. And greed is sanctioned by law, which is what got us here in the first place. And greed has been sanctioned by law for a very long time.
I could give it all up. I could never play another commercially produced piece of music if I decide, after all I did it for about eight years. Yup, I completely gave up media for a long time.
Even working on TVs, when they had tro test play it was on the prevue guide. I wanted none of it, and as a result I can again remember a complete phone number including the area code, and a few other things. So the thing is, what are we fighting for ? Take it, take it back. Keep it. I do not care all that much really. I will just pick my guitar up if I want to hear music. If I want to see something I will find someplace where a bunch of people are acting the fool and have way better entertainment than a movie, even in wide screen and in surround sound could ever provide. When I got out of the media I got into life.
So maybe it is a moot point.
T
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